Dora watched, mouth drying, as Dickie stood up. He was coming across the dance floor and the band was striking up ‘Three Coins in a Fountain’. Then some idiot boy came tearing up from her right.

‘Wanna dance, Dora?’

It was sodding William Maguire, who was always mooning around after her, staring at her cow-eyed. She’d left school last year and started work in the grocer’s, which was easy enough now that rationing had finally come to an end, but dull as fuck. When they’d been in the school playground William hadn’t given her a moment’s peace, and now once again he’d started being a pest, hanging around on the corner near her house with his mates, making stupid remarks as she passed by. These days he had a job as an apprentice down the foundry, he had wages coming in, and he was full of himself.

Dora opened her mouth to speak. Shit! Go away!

‘No she don’t, sonny,’ said Dickie, arriving in front of her. He was taller than she’d thought. Up close, even more gorgeous, too. He had beautiful eyes. ‘So clear off.’

‘And who the hell are you?’ pouted William. ‘Her fucking minder or something?’

Dickie stepped toward him, looked him dead in the eye. ‘I told you. Piss off,’ he said.

Cornered, forced into bravado by Dora’s watching eyes, William puffed himself up.

‘Make me,’ he said.

‘I fucking will, you cheeky little shit,’ said Dickie, and surged forward, grabbing William by his shirt front and yanking him up on his toes to glare nose to nose into the youngster’s eyes.

Everyone in the room turned and looked. The four-piece band fell silent in a discordant series of honks and drumbeats.

‘Hey!’ It was William’s older brother Donny, striding over.

Donny was older and a lot taller than William, more athletic in build, with dark hair and eyes. Donny had always struck Dora as being very intense. He had a wired, buttoned-up look about him, like a spring wound too tightly. He shoved Dickie back, off William.

‘What’s up?’ he asked his brother, his eyes staying on Dickie Cole. He ignored Dora.

Dora had felt a flutter of secret delight at what had been building up between Dickie and William – they were actually fighting over her! – but now she felt a spasm of irritation. Trust him to spoil the fun. Donny always ignored her. At sixteen she was already so used to males falling over themselves to get close to her that his seeming ‘indifference’ offended her deeply. But of course he was on the police force, a newish copper, so Dad said that he thought his shit didn’t stink. Dora felt a sizzle in the air whenever they were in the same space, though: he might not look at her, or speak to her, but she knew, in the way that women always know, that he fancied her.

The Maguires were a tight-knit Irish family who lived two doors up from the O’Briens. They seemed affectionate and protective of each other. Warmer than her family, Dora always noticed. Dora envied them that. She thrived on admiration but never got so much as a smile or even a peck on the cheek from her dad, and that hurt her.